What, in a very general sense, do you look for when hiring a programmer? (Yeah, I'd love to work for Id, but don't worry, I know I'm not qualified.) Obviously, to work on games, one should have a sense of what is fun, and experience and training in the field are always a plus. But in a more general way, what talents, personality traits, habits, etc - that is, what characteristics besides experience and training - do you feel are important for a member of a high-achieving software team?
But isn't it against fedral law for a minor to have a credit card? This came up in the debate over CDA - minors can't have credit cards, so requiring a credit card is a federally endorsed method of blocking minors from adult web sites.
Buddy of mine works at a place where windows were installed in a windowless server room just to give it that old IS department glass-house feel. Company guests now can see the racks full of servers, routers, blinking lights, 21" monitors (utterly wasted at mostly untouched servers) etc, all illuminated by (I'm not making this up) dozens of florescent blacklights installed in the ceiling fixtures. Talk about your unearthly glow. It looks way cooler than your average server room - like something out of a movie. I'm dumbfounded that the management of this multimillion dollar company actually spent money on this, though. I guess looks count, at least when you're trying to impress a suit.
I'd be willing to pay a premium for a cool-looking box, if the box took standard size MB and cards. I don't want to pay a premium for something that looks cool and is utter junk in a few years because nothing inside can be upgraded, which frequently seems to be the case with these nifty looking boxes.
I'd love to read more details about this. I'll have to admit I'm skeptical (Where do you get enough high-grade fissionable material to make plutonium without the NRC knowing about it? How do you verify the presence of plutonium in your dorm room without irradiating yourself? Did this thing produce useful power, or just plutonium? etc.) But the NYT article does not go into much detail about the technical aspects. Does anyone know where we can read more?
You make an interesting point about how my attitude might change if my own income was likely to change as the result "misuse of technology," by which I presume you mean piracy.
As luck would have it, I write small business/consumer software for a living, and therefore my profit-sharing income is, in theory, effected by piracy to some degree. When I handle the tech support calls too sticky for the tech support folks, some end users tell me outright that they're copying our products. So it's real - I'm not just imagining the piracy.
However, as you point out, I cannot really quantify the sales loss that piracy may or may not cause. Partly for that reason, I don't worry about it. Unlike the music industry, I don't blame the medium used to pirate the software for the piracy. Unlike the music industry, I don't imagine that every pirated copy of my program represents a lost sale. And unlike the music industry, I definitely don't hunt and hunt for a way to misinterpret record-high sales figures to make them look like piracy is killing me.
Regardless of whether music sales are effected by MP3s or not, the RIAA has been represented as suffering a sales slump, caused by MP3. This is not true - there is no slump. I don't think lying to the general public is a very good public-relations move. Although my income may (or may not) be diminished by piracy, I would not make up "slumps" or otherwise exaggerate my losses. The RIAA seems to be quite happy to do so, though.
Check out http://www.riaa.com/stats/press/98Profile.PDF. (You'll need a PDF viewer.) It's the original report that the news article is about. It shows music industry sales going UP - $1.5 billion more in 1998 than 1997. That just continues the trend that has DOUBLED total sales over the last 10 years.
True, young people are a shrinking portion of the market. That trend has been clear for 10 years, according to the RIAA's own report. Could it be (gasp!) that young people are a shrinking portion of the population? Blaming MP3 is a transparent myth.
I suppose I shouldn't be shocked by the self-serving spin the RIAA puts on the sales figures. I guess I'm just not cynical enough yet. But it gets worse:
The market has grown SO much in just one year that dollar sales to 15-19 year olds and to 25-29 year olds are UP from 1997 (by over $100 million in each case), even though those groups SHRUNK in terms of market share.
And yet the RIAA has spin-doctored this into: "sales are DOWN!" The truth is that record industry sales are not growing as fast in some demographics as in others. That doesn't sound like news to me really. I guess the music industry will say anything if they get to take a poke at MP3 in the process.
Slashdot Mirror
What, in a very general sense, do you look for when hiring a programmer? (Yeah, I'd love to work for Id, but don't worry, I know I'm not qualified.) Obviously, to work on games, one should have a sense of what is fun, and experience and training in the field are always a plus. But in a more general way, what talents, personality traits, habits, etc - that is, what characteristics besides experience and training - do you feel are important for a member of a high-achieving software team?
I don't like what Amazon is doing, either.
But isn't it against fedral law for a minor to have a credit card? This came up in the debate over CDA - minors can't have credit cards, so requiring a credit card is a federally endorsed method of blocking minors from adult web sites.
Or so I thought, anyhow.
So "good" shows up more then "evil"?
Slashdot = 27,060
Ziff-Davis = 224,075
Doesn't look good, guys.
Then again, I think the bad guys have all the fun.
Buddy of mine works at a place where windows were installed in a windowless server room just to give it that old IS department glass-house feel. Company guests now can see the racks full of servers, routers, blinking lights, 21" monitors (utterly wasted at mostly untouched servers) etc, all illuminated by (I'm not making this up) dozens of florescent blacklights installed in the ceiling fixtures. Talk about your unearthly glow. It looks way cooler than your average server room - like something out of a movie. I'm dumbfounded that the management of this multimillion dollar company actually spent money on this, though. I guess looks count, at least when you're trying to impress a suit.
I'd be willing to pay a premium for a cool-looking box, if the box took standard size MB and cards. I don't want to pay a premium for something that looks cool and is utter junk in a few years because nothing inside can be upgraded, which frequently seems to be the case with these nifty looking boxes.
I'd love to read more details about this. I'll have to admit I'm skeptical (Where do you get enough high-grade fissionable material to make plutonium without the NRC knowing about it? How do you verify the presence of plutonium in your dorm room without irradiating yourself? Did this thing produce useful power, or just plutonium? etc.) But the NYT article does not go into much detail about the technical aspects. Does anyone know where we can read more?
You make an interesting point about how my attitude might change if my own income was likely to change as the result "misuse of technology," by which I presume you mean piracy.
As luck would have it, I write small business/consumer software for a living, and therefore my profit-sharing income is, in theory, effected by piracy to some degree. When I handle the tech support calls too sticky for the tech support folks, some end users tell me outright that they're copying our products. So it's real - I'm not just imagining the piracy.
However, as you point out, I cannot really quantify the sales loss that piracy may or may not cause. Partly for that reason, I don't worry about it. Unlike the music industry, I don't blame the medium used to pirate the software for the piracy. Unlike the music industry, I don't imagine that every pirated copy of my program represents a lost sale. And unlike the music industry, I definitely don't hunt and hunt for a way to misinterpret record-high sales figures to make them look like piracy is killing me.
Regardless of whether music sales are effected by MP3s or not, the RIAA has been represented as suffering a sales slump, caused by MP3. This is not true - there is no slump. I don't think lying to the general public is a very good public-relations move. Although my income may (or may not) be diminished by piracy, I would not make up "slumps" or otherwise exaggerate my losses. The RIAA seems to be quite happy to do so, though.
Check out http://www.riaa.com/stats/press/98Profile.PDF. (You'll need a PDF viewer.) It's the original report that the news article is about. It shows music industry sales going UP - $1.5 billion more in 1998 than 1997. That just continues the trend that has DOUBLED total sales over the last 10 years.
True, young people are a shrinking portion of the market. That trend has been clear for 10 years, according to the RIAA's own report. Could it be (gasp!) that young people are a shrinking portion of the population? Blaming MP3 is a transparent myth.
I suppose I shouldn't be shocked by the self-serving spin the RIAA puts on the sales figures. I guess I'm just not cynical enough yet. But it gets worse:
The market has grown SO much in just one year that dollar sales to 15-19 year olds and to 25-29 year olds are UP from 1997 (by over $100 million in each case), even though those groups SHRUNK in terms of market share.
And yet the RIAA has spin-doctored this into: "sales are DOWN!" The truth is that record industry sales are not growing as fast in some demographics as in others. That doesn't sound like news to me really. I guess the music industry will say anything if they get to take a poke at MP3 in the process.